I feel myself...

Not bitter because I don't have god, not bitter because I don't have a church community, not bitter because this entire sentence has had shit for grammar--

I am pissed off at the screaming morons who squabble like children over who has the better imaginary friend. I am pissed off at the smug declarations that I have a faith. I am pissed off at the assumptions, the accusations and the fact that I am expected to respect religion when religion doesn't respect me.

I am pissed that my mother keeps trying to teach my son prayers.

I am pissed off that my extended family thinks it is any of their business that I do not take my son to church.

I am a bitter atheist because every time I hear someone share some nugget of wisdom about godlessness it's always with a glance at me to see if I will fly off the handle. I don't but dammit I could.

I am tired of my close friends asking me "why" as though I haven't thought this through.

I am tired of being bashed on the television, and I'm tired of chain letters saying that those who love god will forward them.

I am tired of religious groups being emboldened by their numbers and whipping people up into a frenzy.

I feel you, and couldn't agree more. What I can't figure out is why rational thought is translated into bitterness. When you express the ridiculousness of the situation, or thought, or belief, you are called bitter, only because you are not deluded. I am more militant in my beliefs. I believe religion of any kind is a blight and should be eradicated for the good of the planet. It is a means by which the population's thoughts are limited and controlled.

I feel the SAME exact way...its the reason i have to get rid of my crazy ass Jehovah Witness Girlfriend. It will NEVER work. She went from 1 on the religion strength scale to a 50 shortly after we got together, and we've argued about it extensively 3 times since February because she was attempting to push her crap on me. All of those points you brought up, are exactly the way i have been feeling for a WHILE now. I only have a couple of friends that i can comfortably share my atheism with, because my dads side of the family are the OVERLY religious, african american, Jesus freak Baptists or Protestants, and my mothers side of the family are Catholic, Pope crazy caucasions, who will all go into SHOCK when they find out im atheist. So i just dont talk about it with them. But it's SO ANNOYING when i get a promotion or something, and comments like "He always sustains" or "God don't make no mistakes"....SMH...OMAG (oh my atheist god, LMAO) NO ONE made that happen but me, STFU....LOL!

You are not alone friend. I think the more we tend to learn and read the more pissed we become at the ignorance of religion. I try and think "hate the sin, not the sinner" approach, but as more time goes on, I have come to realize that is really just religious BS. Its a cop out of not taking responsibility for your actions. If they want to pray to a holy toaster, by all means do, its when their delusions begin to affect those around them that I start to draw the line. This is the problem with religion and its nuts. They force themselves to govern others based on religious laws and ideas that they think is correct and just. The more we look into things the more we see their will forced upon us and that pisses us off. We didn’t like being controlled when we were part of the collective, and now that were free from dogmatic control, to see them try and still force it down our throats is insulting and degrading.

That sounds so awful to have to deal with such a disrespectful and intrusive family. I would imagine that they are probably bad with boundaries in other ways too. I'm a psychologist and we psychologists love helping people set boundaries on their inappropriate family members - just a thought on one possible resource since your family sounds a bit out of control. Your son is lucky to have an intelligent and insightful mom to support him in engaging in critical thinking and to show him that there are multiple ways of viewing religion - great job. :)

I have a good friend who is a Christian who I was emailing back and forth, talking about things in our lives. She's going through a painful divorce right now, and I was trying to be moral support for her. She was asking me about my loss of faith, and asked what I believed, and I told her that I don't know what I believe, I want to believe in God, but it's not likely that I will be able to continue holding onto that belief.

Then she told me "Well, just don't become one of those angry atheists".

I was stunned by that remark. I was an angry Christian, because I could see the hypocrisy and injustices and ignorance in my fellow Christians, and I was loud about my indignation. Now that I'm teetering on atheism, I still feel that indignation, but in a different way. Because of friends who don't (or wont) understand where I'm coming from. About people who expect me to just keep on blindly following, or people who think I will one day choose Christ again, because I once knew him. People who don't listen, but speculate.